by Dara Horn
The second, third, and fourth kicks were harder than the first, directed at Jacob’s ribs, knees, and face, and followed promptly by the man’s boot on his back. Jacob gagged again, choking, fighting for air as the man laughed. “You aren’t holding anyone here. Who on earth would I exchange you for?”
Jacob’s left eye was swelling, and it was too difficult to open it. He opened his right eye, and with tremendous effort, he turned his head toward the man. “Abigail Solomon,” he gasped.
The man’s mouth opened in disbelief. He whispered, “Abigail?”
His face utterly changed, as if he had transformed into another person. Jacob watched him soften, his jaw slackening, his eyes widening as he looked down at Jacob’s face. “I heard you expelled them,” he said. “What have you done with her?” The man tried to keep the fury in his voice, but he failed to make it sound convincing. He was frightened.
Jacob’s body was still throbbing, and it was difficult for him to speak. He huffed at the air, grimacing. “I didn’t expel anyone,” he wheezed. “It was an order from headquarters. If I had followed it, I would have had to expel myself.”
Jacob watched as the man considered this. He removed his foot from Jacob’s back and looked down at him, still holding his gun. Even after both his feet were resting on the floor beside Jacob’s face, Jacob still felt his wooden heel digging into his spine. The man’s face was pale and still, the way Abigail’s had been when Jacob named the opposite of meat. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Jacob Rappaport,” Jacob gasped. He had forgotten the alias, but it no longer mattered. He had returned from the dead. “And your name is Michael Solomon.”
The man looked at Jacob for a moment. Then he stepped back, and stepped back again, and finally turned to face a column of cartons by the doorway. Jacob curled himself onto his better side, allowing the pain to wash over him, clutching his stomach and breathing hard. Between breaths, he could hear the man swallowing, clearing his throat. At last he turned back to Jacob, his face reddened with shame.
“Is Abigail—is she here?” he asked. His voice was meek, hesitant, like a child asking his father for permission.
It was easier for Jacob to breathe now, though still painful. “She refused to leave,” he said, and pressed his fists against his gut. “She’s being held in the jail in town. Her brothers went to Illinois. I promised I would guard her parents’ things, but I didn’t get here in time.”
The man crouched down next to him, studying him as if he were a fascinating animal, some odd creature he had found in the yard. “Why would you promise that?” the man asked. “Are you in love with her?”
To Jacob’s surprise, it wasn’t a sarcastic question, but a real one. The man’s voice was unsteady, shaken by fear.
“No,” Jacob said, and was amazed that he meant it. “She’s in love with you.”
Michael Solomon stood up slowly, and buried his face in his hands. The light in the room was fading, the lamps going dim as the pain in Jacob’s body dulled. At last Michael raised his head, and looked down at Jacob. “I need to see her,” he murmured. “How can I see her?”
Jacob looked at his face and recognized what was waiting for him, if he wanted it: redemption. “Take me prisoner,” Jacob said, “and exchange me for her.”
There was another explosion outside, louder than the earlier ones. Jacob was still in so much pain that he could barely move, but he found that it was a small relief to remain on the floor. He lay curled on his side and felt oddly comforted, as though the floorboards were a soft, warm mattress. He watched as Michael stepped over to the corner of the room and helped himself to a length of rope. Then he returned to Jacob, bending over him like a father putting a child to bed. He carefully pulled Jacob’s arms around to his back, tying his wrists together with an almost gentle touch. Jacob didn’t resist.
“Stand up,” he said.
Jacob tried to move, but couldn’t. “Help me.”
Michael lifted Jacob from the floor as though Jacob were a small boy, hoisting him up with his hands beneath Jacob’s armpits. Jacob’s side was still burning, and he winced, recoiling as Michael touched it. He could feel how Michael tried to be gentle, leaning him against his own body as he escorted him to the door and out to the dirt road that led away from the inn. After a few steps Jacob was able to walk, though slowly, with Michael’s hand gripping his bound elbow, as though they were a couple out for a stroll on the green.
The two of them walked on together through the gray predawn haze that hovered over the hanging moss. As Jacob struggled through each step, he glanced at Michael again. He was a good man, Jacob suddenly knew: devoted, loyal. All Jacob could think of at that moment was how fortunate it was—for Abigail, for Michael, for their future, in the event that delusions had consequences—that Michael Solomon looked so much like him.
7.
THE TOWN WAS ON FIRE. NOT ENTIRELY, OF COURSE, NOT YET. The buildings that the Union forces had commandeered as storehouses were being burned one by one, but only after being emptied by a kind of reverse bucket brigade of Confederate soldiers, who were tossing sacks and crates full of supplies straight out of windows and along lines of men onto waiting carts that were driven away as soon as they were filled. Once a building was emptied, it was set aflame. The only Union troops Jacob saw in town were kneeling at gunpoint outside the storehouses; apparently the masses hadn’t yet mobilized, or more likely were engaged on the other side of town, in the woods by the camp. Every now and then a shell would explode, or a tree would catch fire.
Michael escorted Jacob through this scene almost casually, as though it were an ordinary morning in Holly Springs. They barely paused, even as they passed rows of cringing captured soldiers and burning buildings. For Michael, none of it mattered except for one place, and he began pulling Jacob along faster, hauling him along the streets lined with captives until they reached the jail.
The sun had risen by then, and the world was soaked in light, smoke, and thunder. But the street where the jail stood remained relatively undisturbed. Some captured soldiers knelt in clusters on the street, but nothing was on fire. The jail was a pathetic little building, nothing more than a police station with a cell or two inside. The front door was locked, but the constable’s office facing the street had a glass window, which Michael promptly smashed with a loose cobblestone. He had just finished pulling both of them through it, mangling Jacob’s uniform and skin in the process, when a Union soldier appeared in the office doorway.
It was a boy Jacob knew in passing from the camp, from one of the newest regiments. He couldn’t have been older than fifteen. Assigned to guard the prisoner overnight, he had apparently locked himself inside the little jailhouse, too paralyzed by the call of duty to abandon his post when he had first heard the shelling, and now he was trapped.
Michael raised his gun at the boy, who was pointing a pistol at him in return. But the boy saw Jacob’s bruised, swollen face, and recognized him. Suddenly the boy began quaking in horror. He dropped his gun and raised his hands in the air. To Jacob’s astonishment, the boy started to cry uncontrollably, sobbing like a baby. “Please don’t kill me,” he begged.
Michael glanced at Jacob, and almost smiled. “This is a prisoner exchange,” he announced, his voice a parody of gruffness. “Who are you holding here?”
The boy paused, gulping. “Only a lady,” he said, his voice cracking.
“Give me the keys,” Michael told the boy. The boy backed away, cowering toward the wall. “Now.”
The boy glanced at Jacob, as if looking for approval. Jacob nodded at him, and watched as the boy’s hands tugged at his belt until he had released a ring of keys, which he threw at Michael.
Michael grabbed them out of the air, then fumbled for a moment to put them in his pocket. In the meantime the boy quickly bent down, desperately reaching for his pistol. But Michael saw it. He straightened in a fraction of a second and fired a shot high at the wall, shattering a clock into a downpour of glas
s and brass numbers. The boy fell to his knees, wailing, “Jesus, save me, Jesus, save me!”
“Get out,” Michael said.
The boy sobbed again and rose quickly, hurrying out the office door. Michael followed, taking the boy’s pistol off the floor and then pulling Jacob with him until they were both in the little hallway, watching the boy unlock the front door and flee into the street.
“Michael?”
Michael dropped Jacob’s elbow and rushed around the corner. By the time Jacob limped behind him, Abigail was already rising to her feet in her cell, rushing to where Michael was fitting key after key into the lock until one finally caught.
Abigail looked nothing like Jacob had ever seen her. Her hair was wild, tangled in thick clumps around her head. Her dress was stained with something—food, perhaps, or vomit. But when he saw her kissing Michael through the bars, he recognized her, and Michael too, and he felt each kiss as though it were his. It was only when Michael finally opened the door that she saw Jacob, and drew in her breath.
“The sergeant generously agreed to a trade,” Michael said. Jacob watched him as he checked her, hesitant, searching her expression. “We’re leaving him here.”
Abigail looked at Jacob, but her face betrayed nothing. “Thank you, sergeant,” she said.
Fortunately Michael couldn’t see Jacob’s face after that; he had turned Jacob around, untying his hands. “The town is surrounded,” he told Jacob as he pulled at the rope. “If you walk out that door, you’ll be taken immediately.” Jacob heard Abigail breathing behind him, and tried not to weep. “Stay here until it calms down. We’re only burning the supply houses, and it doesn’t seem like there are any on this street. If you wait here until we leave, you’ll be safe.”
In fact the shop right next to the jailhouse had been commandeered weeks ago as an ammunition dump. If Michael didn’t know this, Jacob reasoned, then his fellow Rebels didn’t either. And Jacob had seen the captives in the street and knew that what Michael said was true: walking out that door in a blue uniform, unarmed, would lead only to imprisonment or death. The boy had surely fled directly into a trap. Jacob had barely thought the matter through before he heard Abigail’s soft breathing again. He closed his eyes and felt the hard ache in the side of his head, his left eye forced shut.
Finally his hands were freed, and Michael turned him around. His face was too bruised and swollen for Michael to notice the tears in his eyes.
“We owe you everything, sergeant,” Abigail said to Jacob. “May God reward you, in the next world or in this one.”
Before Jacob could think of anything to say in return, Michael had taken her by the hand and hurried her out the door. Jacob sank down to the cold floor in the corridor outside Abigail’s cell, and accepted his reward.
THE WALK FROM the inn had been torture, though his body only registered it now in its fullest capacity. He panted, exhausted. For a time there was a strange quiet in the air; the shelling and gunshots paused, the eye of the battle’s storm. He looked down at his uniform, torn and bloody from the trip through the shattered window, and felt his pockets to see if he had anything on his person that might be useful as he tried to make his way back. And that was when he remembered the letter.
He took it out of his pocket, looking at the front of the envelope for a moment before tearing it open to read the curled handwriting inside:
October 20, 1862
Dear Jeannie,
We just received your letter of October 9 with your new address at Aunt Rachel’s, which you sent us a full week after Yom Kippur, so it is to our great chagrin that we must now send you our belated best wishes for the new year, three weeks after you have surely been sealed in the Book of Life. Nevertheless, we hope that the holidays were happy for you, and that the year 5623 will bring everyone peace.
We also hope you will accept our belated thanks for the $20 we received from you over the summer, which we direly needed. Your husband was so generous. We look forward to meeting him someday.
With great affection,
Abigail, Frank, and Jeff
With each line his good eye grew wider, his mouth hanging open as he slowly read and reread every word. “I have cousins in Virginia,” he heard Abigail saying in his head. Your new address at Aunt Rachel’s… He thought of his own wedding, of talking to Jeannie’s aunt from Richmond just moments before William Williams burst through the door. Had that been her name? Your husband was so generous… Had his hundred-dollar bill from the command been divided, a portion of it sent to Holly Springs?…which you sent us a full week after Yom Kippur… A week after the day she had died in jail? But that meant—that meant—
And then he heard the thunderous roar as the earth opened its jaws and swallowed him whole.
PART SIX
THE CAUSE
1.
THE AMMUNITION DUMP ADJACENT TO THE JAIL IN HOLLY SPRINGS exploded just moments after Abigail and Michael fled. Later Jacob remembered the sound of the first detonation, so near that he felt it instead of hearing it—felt himself lifted and hurled through the air and then slammed and crushed against a wall, and then under a wall, a wall that caught fire. He remembered a pillar of fire rising before him, bowing down over his head as he kneeled beneath it, cowering lower and lower, prostrating himself deep into the earth. He didn’t remember the rest.
The raid on Holly Springs mattered, in the end, to almost no one. The railway lines and roads that Jacob’s regiment had been protecting were destroyed, along with vast stores of supplies. But Grant reconstructed the supply line within weeks and proceeded on to Vicksburg to great success, while Jacob lay in his bed in New York, useful as a soldier only for retreat and defeat. The only people for whom the attack made any difference at all, as it turned out, were the captured, the dead, Abigail and Michael Solomon, and Jacob.
His mother later read him the reports describing it all: how his mangled body was found, unconscious, by the burial detail, who assumed he was dead; how they noted his rank and loaded his body in with other officers’ corpses to be transported home for an officer’s burial; how someone, by the obscurest of miracles, happened to hear a moan emerge from the stack of dead bodies, and pulled him back into the land of the living. Both of his legs were shattered and he had lost his right eye, among other wounds, but for some idiotic reason, he was alive.
Five months passed before he could get out of bed. Pain was his constant companion, clasping him in bed night and day in a lover’s torrid embrace, kissing his face with its burning lips and sinking deep into his seared and branded flesh. During most of that time his face was bandaged daily, and it was usually too painful to speak. When his parents first saw him, his mother had sobbed and wailed, doubled over, screaming to the skies, “My baby! My baby!” His father had examined him in utter revulsion, afraid to approach him. When his father finally deigned to touch him, he held him only gingerly, with the tips of his fingers, his skin radiating disgust. Jacob perceived through his remaining eye, as he proceeded through the long blank months of his convalescence, that things in the household had changed. Few visitors came by, and there seemed to be only two servants left. But it was his parents who had changed the most.
His father had aged. He seemed to have lost much of his hair in the year and a half since Jacob had left; what remained of it appeared less blond and more silver, and was combed carefully across the top of his bare head. His blue eyes appeared watery, red around the rims of his eyelids. He had become thinner, too, his belly no longer protruding beneath his vest. But what had changed about him most was that he no longer smiled at Jacob, not even condescendingly. He no longer spoke to Jacob at all. He came into Jacob’s room only once a day, if that, and when he did he didn’t open his mouth. Instead he sat watching Jacob as though Jacob couldn’t see him, rendering judgment.
During those long months while he remained in bed, the only time Jacob heard his father speak was when he listened to his parents in the hall beyond his bedroom, when they both thought he was
sleeping. One night outside his closed bedroom door, his mother’s voice began as a whisper and grew into an unbearable wail. When he could finally make out her words, she was sobbing.
“You did this to him, Marcus,” she cried. “You did this to him!” In his bed, Jacob cringed.
“Don’t insult me.” His father’s voice was a hard black stone. “He did this to himself.”
Jacob listened as his mother lost courage, and begged for his approval. “Please, Marcus, I—I didn’t mean—it’s just that he’s only a boy, Marcus. Please, he’s just a boy, he’s—”
He heard his father’s foot pound the floor. “I won’t accept responsibility for someone else’s foolishness.”
“Marcus, please, you’re a generous man, a reasonable man. Please, be reasonable, please, be generous, please—” She was whimpering now, cowering before him, the way Jacob remembered her. It was oddly comforting to him. “Marcus, think of yourself when you were young. You ran away from your father too.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” his father spat. “My father wanted me to spend the rest of my life in the yeshiva. It was a life sentence to prison. What I gave Jacob was an opportunity.”
“You gave him a life sentence,” his mother said, with a quaver. “And he knew it.”
“At his age I would have killed to have what he was offered.”
His mother’s voice retreated, as though her voice itself were kneeling on the floor. “Please, Marcus. At least be kind to him now, now that he’s here. You ought to at least be pleased that he won’t leave again. He—he can’t.” Jacob could hear her weeping. “Please, Marcus—”
“I’m being quite kind to him just by having him in my house,” his father said. But Jacob was shocked to hear a slight crack in his father’s voice. His father cleared his throat, and tried to speak firmly again. But his voice was a ghost of what it had been. “Another father would have rejected him, punished him. But I don’t have to punish him. God is punishing him.”